Effect of surgery on the relief of pain in patients of degenerative lumbar spine disease

Abstract

Background: Lumbar degenerative spine conditions cause mobility dysfunction and can result in alterations in physical functioning and variable levels of pain. The best measurement of treatment quality in these diseases should be the patient’s opinion of the results using patient-reported outcome instruments.
Aims: To do comparative evaluation of pain intensity in lumbar degenerative spine patients in preoperative and postoperative period.
Settings and Design: Pain intensity of all selected patients was measured at admission and postoperatively using Numeric pain rating scale (NPRS).
Materials and Methods: Effect of surgery on pain relief in 60 patients of degenerative lumbar spine disease was studied.
Statistical Analysis used: Paired ‘t’ test was performed to find out the differences in the variables between pre-operative and post-operative stages among the study population.
Results: Preoperative NPRS values (mean=7.88) improved at discharge (mean=4.8) and throughout the follow up period at 1month (mean=3.46), at 6 months (mean=2) and 1 year (mean=1.11).
Conclusions: All the patients showed improvement in their NPRS scores throughout the follow up period. The use of NPRS outcome instrument gives us a platform to predict a positive and accurate outcome after surgery in the long term.